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Florence on a rainy November afternoon; but then, this piece of conquistador Californio is much closer to John La Farge and Louis Stevenson than it is to the Stanford University property which marches with it, out by the long shaded road, past the Bret Harte ranch house and over the jungle stream.                       
  It is a shock to drop from the bright blue mornings of Los Altos and the Villa Castellani to Frank Duveneck's Ohio. His mother was brought up in a German settlement called Stallostown, which isn't even on the map today; when her father was killed in a fall from his wagon it took her a month to walk back to Cincinnati, barefoot. In 1849, when he was less than a year old, cholera killed half the people of Cincinnai.
  Between the two deaths, Duveneck's mother worked as a maid for James Beard, an itinerant portrait painter. After Frank's father, a shoemaker who was illiterate in two languages, died of cholera, his mother married the owner of a saloon. There was a beer garden at the back of the little white house, which opened directly on the street. This is the house Frank Duveneck returned to after the tragic death of his wife Lizzie Boott in the Rue de Tilsit. No wonder Henry James could not understand him; James was never in a saloon in all his born days, while to Duveneck saloons were home.
  Duveneck was apprenticed to a church painter who produced the same kind of appalling religious art for Catholic churches in the States as was ground out across the Derby Line in Quebec. During his journeyman wanderings, Duveneck painted in the barren backwoods of Canada, where the trees are so sad, as well as all over the Catholic

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164

Middle West. As an alter boy, at the age of fourteen, he had considered becoming a priest; it is fair to say that he did not have a vocation. Lamprecht, the lay-brother for whom he worked, had studied at the Munich Academy, and Father Cosmos, the superior of a Benedictine monastery in Newark which they helped to decorate, wrote to his parents, asking if they would put up $150 a year for him to study in Munich. The letter was in German. Cincinnati did not assimilate the Germans: they assimilated Cincinnati.
  It was just as natural for Duveneck to go to Munich as for West or Stuart to go to London. At twenty-one, for a church mouse, Munich was a dream, a revelation and a paradise. Duveneck was transformed into a raging lion, and his first wild weeks at Weimar stretched into years. He was not exactly a Goethean type. The warm welcome of the studios, the extraordinary dark beer, the wonderful talk and the starling whiteness of the girls transported him; this is it, this is it, this is it! From a realistic point, and Duveneck was a realist, life was absolutely wonderful. he revelled in the Pinakothek, where the Brouwers and the Rubenses to youthful eyes are the greatest in the world; he used to take his portraits into the gallery and stand them up against his favourites: 'I wasn't going to have anyone get ahead of me'. He learned more there than from his teachers, just as he learned more from Leibl. As Mrs. Duveneck says, it was intoxicating for him to realize, right away, that he could paint as well as anybody! When Lenback praised his work he wrote home in ecstacy: 'Such things happen only to Van Dyck!' and the nights were for the gods. When he came back to Cincinnati on a visit, according to an old friend, 'he was a real swell, swinging a cane and tossing a Munich cape back from his shoulders'.
  Mrs. Duveneck is a true New Englander, uniquely qualified to understand what Boston did for Duveneck, and what it did to him. She points out what we forget, that William Morris Hunt, who sponsored Duveneck's amazingly successful Boston show, was long considered an improper Bohemian. Duveneck's pictures sold, including the big one to Hunt's pupil Elizabeth Boott, but Duveneck quite rightly turned down tempting offers to stay. Boston was no place for an artist, and Duveneck went back, taking Twachtman with him, and H. F. Farney, later Cincinnati's gift to the Wild West.
  Duveneck had everything he wanted in Munich, including game in winter. Living was incredibly cheap, and when he and Chase ran out of money for models they painted each other. He was rich in everything that matters; personally and professionally he was a howling success. He loved the life, and the capers and the absolute euphoria. There were more than 100 American artists and students in Munich: Duveneck was the Father, Chase was the Son and Shirlaw, Chase's room-mate, was the Holy Ghost.
  Pupils flocked, including Miss Boott, who came to Venice, where he and Twachtman, with assistance from Mrs. Bronson, the Queen of Asolo, nursed Chase through a bad bout of malaria, which he could perfectly well have caught in St. Louis. 'He is a remarkable looking young man, and a gentleman, which I did not expect'. In Munich he gave her lessons, for 'he had a real genius for imparting to others. It is wonderful to see him sling the paint'. Her letters from Munich, here printed for the first time, are priceless, along with much other new material make Mrs. Duveneck's book a genuine primary source. 'Personally I like the Professor very much. he is a child of Nature, but a natural gentleman. He is the frankest, kindest-hearted of mortals and the least likely to make his way in the world. He is rather lazy, I fancy and besides never look at all to the main chance, so I suppose he will always be out of elbow as he seems to be now'. Miss Boott was to see to that. his method of teaching was to demonstrate, as Chase often did; except for a few hints, it is the great way and there is no other. 'He painted for me all day as he generally does and I rack my brains to understand how he does it'. 'I don't know if I am to possess the sketches made before me. If I do I shall be a rich woman'. [[random scribble]]
  When she went back to Florence, Duveneck with his boys followed in her wake, 'though he ought finally to go to Paris'. She was to bring that off too. Florence was swarming with Americans and English, and this 'singular and fascinating genius' became all the rage. His students worshipped him. In the summer he went back to Venice with his boys and printed his etchings on a press with an evil disposition, which Pennell said was probably used by Dürer. When the etchings were taken to London by Miss Blood, they were the success of the season, despite the bad printing. Miss Blood, who was a dashing young lady indeed - her subsequent spectacular divorce from Lord Colin Campbell horrified poor Henry James - brought the handsome young artist along to London with his etchings. There is a photograph of him on this wonderful visit, wearing a tam o' shanter and a soft silk tie. Under conditions like these, any man looks his best, and Duveneck was a man of exceedingly good fortunes.
  In 1886 he finally married Lizzie Boott, despite her father's hysterical opposition: as Lizzie said: 'I crave human interests in life. The abstract ones of art are not enough for me'. Of course not. From Vallombrosa, Lizzie wrote shortly afterwards: 'the fallen leaves under under our feet were so thick they they were knee deep. It seems such a natural thing for people who love each other to belong together'. After the birth of 'this small thing with a strong likeness already to his father', she wrote: 'It seems strange after so many years of spinsterhood to get so much domestic life in so short a time. I am so thankful for all this wonderful happiness'. After two years of ecstatic marriage she died, completely unexpectedly, of pneumonia.
  This tragedy wrecked Duveneck's career, and the rest of his life was passed in Cincinnati, while his fame declined. It was Cincinnati's gain, for he made and led that burst of artistic activity on which the Queen City still prides herself, yet unquestionably it was bad for his painting. There is no mystery, but it is an astonishing story. He was, as always, a man beloved, and he painted some good pictures but the great days were over. The murals which he painted in St. Mary's Cathedral in Covington in honour of his mother are a deplorable return to the church art of journeyman days. Mrs. Duveneck's book is a mine of information on a most extraordinary career. As Chase told Frank Boott Duveneck, 'You know, the Old Man, your father, was the greatest of us all'.
  (Further Book Reviews on page 165)